


North Star

by yellowcottondresses



Category: Nashville (TV)
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Family Drama, Future Fic, parenting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-23
Updated: 2013-11-15
Packaged: 2017-12-30 07:21:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 16,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1015757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yellowcottondresses/pseuds/yellowcottondresses
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's funny - no matter how hard you try, somehow the past just keeps repeating itself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 1

**Author's Note:**

> My first foray into Nashville fanfic. Oh dear. Wondering what exactly I've gotten myself into.  
> This will be a two-shot (with the slight possibility turning into a three-shot).  
> I don't own Nashville, or anything affiliated. Orion is mine, though, and I’ve become quite fond of him while writing this. Which, won’t lie, really surprised me. Who knew I could learn to love something associated with Avery frikkin’ Barkley.

I.

The lack of oranges disappointed him the most. 

Gunnar hadn’t spent a whole lot of time in Florida, but one thing he always pictured when he thought of the state – aside from the beaches, palm trees, and the ocean – was the miles of orange groves. The palm tree part hadn’t let him down, but Gunnar had to see one single orange, and he had to admit, he was disappointed. 

They had pulled off the main roads of Fort Pierce a few miles back, and so far the only thing remotely “Floridian” Gunnar had seen were miles of boats and broken-down store fronts, and a few choice spaces he was sure had been used to film some gory slasher movies. The marina they were passing right now especially gave him the creeps, lined with rusted-out tankers and old railroad cars that sat off long-overgrown tracks. The pouring rain added to how spooky this place felt, as heavy clouds the color of bullets swept over the water, the forgotten railcars, the abandoned shipyard; the Texaco station, the bait and tackle shops.

“When’s it gonna stop raining?”

Gunnar turned towards Orion just as the TAYLOR CREEK MARINA sign swept past the storm-streaked window. Orion was sitting on his knees, face pressed to the window, palms pressed flat against the cold glass. 

Gunnar looked over at Scarlett. She was sitting towards the front of the bus, ear buds in, biting her lip and staring out the front window, a distant look on her face. It was probably the rough cuts to the songs they’d written a few weeks ago, but whatever it was, it didn’t look like anyone was going to drag her back to earth. 

Orion rocked against the couch, bouncing off the window before falling against it. Then he rocked back, and slapped his hands against the glass. 

Gunnar reached over and grabbed his arms. 

“Knock it off,” he said. “Come on, don’t do that. You’re gonna break the window.”

Orion scowled. “I can’t break the windows. I do it all the time.”

“Well, stop,” he said, gripping the boy’s arm tighter. 

Orion’s lower lip jutted out, and then he flipped over on his stomach, flopping down on the lumpy cushions.

“Can we go to the beach?” he said, dragging out each syllable. 

“No,” Gunnar said. “Come on bud, we have a show tonight, you know that.”

“But I wanna go to the beach!”

Gunnar sighed. “Well, tough. We all have to do things we don’t want to do.”

Orion shrieked into the cushions. Apparently it was loud enough to even grab Scarlett’s attention, because she slipped a bud out of her ear and looked their way.

“What’re you boys doin’ over there?”

Gunnar rolled his eyes. “Orion seems to think this is perfect beach weather.” He gestured to the pounding rain, beating loudly against the windows. 

“Hang in there just a few more minutes, baby,” Scarlett said. “We’ll take a break soon. I promise.”

Orion lifted his face out of the cushions, tears streaking his cheeks. “But I’m bored,” he wailed.

Gunnar sucked in a breath and closed his eyes. In and out in and out, in and out. Better to do that than something he’d regret later. 

Scarlett sighed, opened her arms to her son. Orion darted off the couch next to Gunnar and crawled into his mother’s lap, tucking the dark crown of his head under her chin. Scarlett wrapped herself around him, rocking them a bit as she pressed a kiss into his messy hair. 

Gunnar ran his hands across his face, sighed into them. He caught Scarlett’s eye over Orion’s whimpers, and shot her a look. Scarlett shrugged one shoulder, and went back to ducking her face into her son’s dark hair, trying to quiet him. 

It was gonna be a long ride to Sunset Sounds. 

 

II.

Gunnar had wanted to drive straight through all the way to the showground, but one thing he and Scarlett had both learned over the past six years was that traveling with a child meant you had to be flexible. 

Well, Scarlett had learned it, anyway. Sometimes she thought Gunnar had skipped that part of parenting. Hadn’t read that chapter in the nonexistent manual titled “How To Travel Across The Country With A Small, Restless Child Who Doesn’t Care About Career Plans”.

They finally decided to stop for lunch, instead of just snacking on the chicken salad and biscuits she’d made and had sitting in the mini fridge. Gunnar had rolled his eyes, but the longer they sat there the closer Orion was getting to “meltdown mode”, and both of them knew it. It would probably do everybody some good, she figured, to let them all stretch their legs a little, and if Orion had some French fries in his system and a little space to blow off steam maybe he’d settle down and be less likely to rile up Gunnar before the show tonight. 

And give her a chance to breathe. Which would be nice, considering she felt like she’d been that damn cartoon Roadrunner lately, runnin’ around so fast from one place to the next that she was just a blur in the distance. 

Orion shifted in her arms, and peered up at her. “How much longer?” He was still sniffling a little. 

She ignored the grunt Gunnar made from the couch across from them. “A few more minutes, bud.”

“But how many more minutes?”

“You need to stop pesterin’,” Gunnar snapped. “She’s trying to get work done.”

Orion pushed his face into Scarlett’s neck. She narrowed her eyes at Gunnar over her son’s dark head, and he looked out the window instead. 

“I wanna get off the bus,” he mumbled. His breath was hot on her skin, his fingers scratching at her collarbone.

She sighed, ran her fingers over his forehead. It always soothed him, even as an infant. It mesmerized him, a surefire way to get a cranky baby who didn’t want to go down closing his eyes. Sure enough, he stopped twitching after a moment, head against her shoulder, and the frustrated tears on his face starting to dry.  
Scarlett looked out the window, saw the rain slowly coming to a stop. She could see the water – the Intracoastal, not the ocean, as she’d been taught the first time she came through here – and it looked like molten silver. Above it, the sky was slowly turning from grey to slate to the barest baby blue, far over the other side of the bridge, off the mainland. 

Orion shifted in her lap, and Scarlett adjusted her hold on him, keeping his scrawny elbows from digging into her stomach. She still had to go through the emails their agent sent them, check out the mp3s recently downloaded on her laptop. She needed more time with the rough cuts Shelley had sent them, and she still wasn’t sure if the second verse to the song she and Gunnar had been trying to write for the past three weeks needed tweaking or not.

But Orion was needing her. And he had a way of always pushing what he wanted to the forefront. Always demanding her, because she was his mama and that was her job. To making everything about him, always about him. 

She sighed, stroked the back of her son’s dark hair.

A lot like his daddy on that front, she thought grimly. She shifted Orion in her lap, pressed a light kiss to the side of his face. A whole, whole lot like his daddy.

Orion was sometimes so much like Avery that it seemed like God had the sickest sense of humor ever. There were still moments when Scarlett found herself doing a double-take, when an expression crossed his small face or he took a certain tone with her. If she hadn’t endured nineteen hours of hard labor in an un-air-conditioned hospital, she might think her son had come directly from Avery, like that one myth about Zeus she half-remembered from high school. 

Across the couch, Gunnar had his earbuds back in. He leaned against the bench and closed his eyes, tapping his foot to some melody she couldn’t hear. Orion shifted again, frustrated tears staining her shoulder, and she went back to rocking the two of them, almost in time to the beat of Gunnar’s unheard song.

They decided a while ago, not to have one of their own. Scarlett was done having babies, and Gunnar agreed that one was enough for two full-time touring musicians and songwriters.

Sometimes, Scarlett wondered if there was more to it than just that. If the real reason Gunnar didn’t want to have his own baby with her was because he thought he’d love it more than Orion. That it would ultimately cement the wedge between him and the boy; a child fathered by him, instead of a constant reminder of Avery, of Scarlett’s choices. That if he had a child of his own, he’d never look at Orion the same way again. 

 

III.

Gunnar had grown up in Texas, so he knew a thing or two about what it meant to feel the heat. But the first time he stepped off a tour bus into the Florida sunshine, it was like nothing else he’d ever felt before. A mix between being smothered in wet blankets and buried under mounds of rotting fruit. Like drowning while standing up, the air tasting like salt and dead grass and decay, and fish. Fish everywhere. 

He was so ready for summer to end. Already he longed for October in Tennessee – the way the autumn scattered at their feet, an embarrassment of riches. The sky was a cloudless, solid shade of blue, and it was comforting, how uniform it was, while the world underneath it kept changing, the season like a flame surrounding them; a world made of jewels and fire. 

Here, it seemed as if everything around them was slightly smeared, the heat making the world run like wet paint. He could see the heat waves, shimmering off the blacktop. Even the rain hadn’t cooled things down much.

“Where’s the A/C,” Scarlett mumbled. 

She was leaning against the side of the bus, fanning herself with a legal pad she’d been scratching lyrics on – and then scratching them off right after – for the past half an hour. They were stopped at a gas station that sold sunflowers, not far from the bridge that took them over the water and officially off the mainland. 

Gunnar always hated bridges. Had an even bigger aversion to large bodies of water. They made him suspicious. Maybe it came from growing up in the fiery dry plains of middle Texas, of never seeing the ocean until he was twenty-five and couldn’t make himself go much deeper than the waist because Jason had forced Gunnar to watch Jaws when he was seven and it’d damn near traumatized him for life. Also, he’d never learned how to swim, and the current had been rough that first day, with warnings for rip tides posted from every empty lifeguard tower and ominous red flags sticking out of the sand. 

He yawned and stretched back, feeling his back creak and trying not to wince when something popped. It didn’t hurt, but Gunnar was pretty sure that wasn’t supposed to happen. He ran his fingers through his hair, curling into thick horns against his forehead, and yawned again. Back about ten minutes ago he’d been almost as ready as Orion to get out of the bus and stretch his restless legs, but the post-storm heat seemed to zap it all out of him, and now he sat on the bottom step of the bus and felt ready for a nap.

Damn it, maybe he really was getting old. 

No. He refused to entertain that notion. He was only thirty-one. Still in shape, still had all hair in the right places, could still bend the way he was supposed to. And for now, could deal with that sore back and aching knee joints with a couple of Advil. Maybe a whiskey shot. 

“Rye!” Scarlett’s sharp voice cut across the buzzing, lazy afternoon. “No runnin’ in the street. Come here, now.”

Gunnar cracked an eye open, saw the small, dark-haired shape that was wobbling on the curbside, spindly arms held out like a pinwheel. Orion’s hair was in dire need of a haircut, bangs almost covering his eyes and curling on the back of his neck. Gunnar figured it was only a matter of time before the boy found himself underneath the mercy of Scarlett’s scissors, out back behind the bus. 

Gunnar ran his hands through his own hair once again. He was one to talk. 

As if she read his mind, he heard Scarlett murmur, “He really needs a haircut.”

She had an aversion to letting Orion’s hair get too long, too shaggy. When he could officially tuck it behind his ears, it was a signal that Scarlett had let it go too long. She always said it looked neater trimmed and made him look less like a hobo, but Gunnar figured it had something to do with the way he was already too familiar to look at sometimes, and who Scarlett really saw when he watched her double-take at her own child when he thought she couldn’t see it.

It was like the grand cosmic joke in the chaos that was their lives, how much that boy looked like his father. 

 

IV.

“Look who finally made it off the tour bus!”

Scarlett smiled into the phone, as if her best friend could somehow hear her, thousands of miles away. She drew her legs up on the edge of the fountain, and rested the phone against her shoulder, turned towards the sun. “Please, tell me you have something incredibly dull to tell me.”

“What?” Zoey teased, and Scarlett smiled, curling a length of hair around her finger. She could see Zoey’s face as clear as day, the mischievous grin tugging her features. “You mean you don’t wanna hear about the scandal at the church bake sale?”

“Oh god no,” Scarlett groaned. “I want to hear something so phenomenally boring that it puts me to sleep right here on the concrete.”

“But then you’d miss talking to me,” Zoey said, “and that sort of defeats the purpose of the whole ‘planned best friend time’ you and I have scheduled.”

“I know,” Scarlett sighed. “Believe me. I miss talkin’ to you, too.”

“Where are you, anyway? You sound like you’re blowing a wind machine into the phone, or something.”

“Sorry.” Scarlett adjusted the cell on her shoulder. “I’m at a marina. Right on the ocean. The breeze is pretty strong.” She looked out at the water, the slow roll of clouds on the horizon. “Sure is pretty, though.”

“You guys make it to the show yet?”

“Nah. We had to stop. Someone needed to get off the bus before he drove everyone crazy.”

“Uh-huh.” She could hear Zoey rolling her eyes, even across state lines. “And would that someone be the six-year-old, or the one who likes to act like the six-year-old?”

Scarlett snorted. “Both.”

“I can tell,” Zoey said drily. “How are you holding up?”

Scarlett closed her eyes, smelled the breeze off the water. It smelled like fish, and salt, and the tangy zing in the air that meant an oncoming storm. Nothing like Nashville.  
“I’m holdin’,” she said. “Just not sure if it’s up or down.”

“Well, relax,” Zoey said. “Remember, just a few more weeks, and you finally get to relax.”

“Yeah,” Scarlett said, “because with a six-year-old startin’ first grade and Shelley beatin’ down me and Gunnar’s door for new songs every ten minutes, relaxin’ is the first thing I’ll be able to do once I step foot back in Nashville.”

“And come see me!” Zoey added. “Don’t forget that part. Don’t you dare think about backing out on it.”

“No, trust me. It’s the one thing I’ve been looking forward to for months.”

“Only a few more weeks,” her friend replied.

“Yeah.” She wished she could see Zoey’s smile in person, instead of having to imagine it. 

“How are you?” Scarlett said. “I haven’t talked to you in so long. Did you guys pick a nursery color yet?”

“Yep. Isaiah and I picked green.”

“Seriously?” Scarlett smiled. “Green? Like, St. Patrick’s Day green, or Key Lime Pie green?”

“Neither, smartass,” Zoey replied. “It’s barely green. You can’t even really tell what color it is. Well, technically, it’s called ‘slate green’ – or at least, that’s what the paint can at Home Depot said. But it looks really nice. Very easily could be a boy or girl’s room.”

“And you’re still going on about not wantin’ to know? I mean, isn’t the curiosity killin’ you, even a little?”

“I told you, it’s more fun this way!” Zoey insisted. “And besides, I know my parents, and Isaiah knows his. We know if anyone says anything blue or pink, this kid will be outfitted into some 1950s idea of gender norms before you can say ‘sexism’.”

Scarlett rolled her eyes. “You know it’s gonna happen anyway though. I mean, it’s not like you can keep it hidden once that kid pops out.”

“It’s the principle of the thing,” Zoey said firmly. “Okay? Come on, you know I worked really hard to try and get away from the whole idea of a preacher’s daughter. I love my family, I love the way I grew up. But that doesn’t mean I don’t think it can change. Why repeat our parents’ mistakes, you know?”

Scarlett looked up, saw Gunnar and Orion standing by the water’s edge. Gunnar had picked up the boy by his midsection, holding him over the railing so he could see better. Sea gulls dotted the ground where they stood, lining the sides of the waterfront like little white flags. Orion pointed at something down in the water, and Gunnar peered down to see what he was looking at. 

“Yeah,” she said quietly. “I know that.”

“Anyway, I meant to ask you,” Zoey was saying, and Scarlett looked away from her boys, the wind tousling their hair. “Do you think Gunnar would feel left out if I didn’t name him the godfather?” 

Scarlett took her free hand, lapped it in the fountain’s tinny-smelling water. 

“It’s just,” Zoey continued, “Isaiah has been dropping all these hints about wanting Titus and Peter to be named godfather, and since I’m already naming you and my sister as godmother…I just feel like, Isaiah should get his picks, and I should get mine.”

“What happened to ‘outdated gender norms’?” Scarlett replied. 

“It was our decision,” Zoey said. “Look, I’m not saying that I don’t love Gunnar, because you know I do. But I just don’t want him to get all weird about this. Like we left him out on purpose. Because we didn’t.”

She watched Gunnar put Orion down, and watched the boy keep reaching over the rail. Then Gunnar picked him up once more, setting her son on his hips. Orion wrapped his spidery legs around Gunnar’s middle and looked out over the water, his dark head almost reaching the top of Gunnar’s own. 

“Gunnar’s a big boy,” Scarlett said. “He can handle it.”

 

V.

Orion never called Gunnar “Daddy” or “Dad”. He never called anyone by that name, actually, unless you counted the mangled “Duh-duh-duh” sound he’d bubbled when he started learning to talk and couldn’t make out all the syllables of “Deacon”. Which made sense, given that Deacon was as close to a dad as Scarlett had ever known, and her son would feel that same sense of safety, security, love. 

Why he never latched onto the word with Gunnar, though, was another story. Scarlett couldn’t explain it to anyone for the life of her, but for some reason, no one had ever gotten around to labeling Gunnar as “Daddy” in front of the little boy. Even as a baby, when Gunnar had been there, helping her feed him and change him and rock him to sleep when he cried, neither of them had ever started calling Gunnar “Daddy”. Even Deacon had been in on it, as if this was something they’d all planned out and discussed before Orion had ever been born. 

Gunnar didn’t know why it didn’t bother him, honestly. He’d known that boy his whole life. He was as good as Gunnar’s own; it didn’t matter who his real father was.

Well.

“Real” as in, blood-related. As in, the part that helped create him. But it was just a label. It didn’t matter who Orion’s “real” father was, because he had so many grown men in his life who loved him and treated him like one of their own. Not just Gunnar and Deacon, but Will, Davis, Zoey’s husband Isaiah. All of them, worthier men of the title than Orion’s own shitbag excuse of a father. 

In Gunnar’s ever-so-humble opinion, that was. 

The whole world was filled with bad fathers. Gunnar never had anyone to call “Daddy”, but he had Jason. And that was a thousand times better than the man who should have had that title; the piece-of-shit, drug-addicted scumbag who beat his pregnant wife and older son until he broke their bones, then disappeared in the night, never to be heard from again, and good riddance. Scarlett’s dad had left his little girl, but she had Deacon, and he loved her more than anyone. Orion would never be a part of his biological father, but he was better off for it, as far as everyone was concerned. 

Titles didn’t matter, and blood didn’t mean a damn thing. If he’d learned anything from Scarlett since first falling in love with her, it was that.  
Still. It didn’t stop the whispers, the rumors, the second glances. They’d both debated on what it would mean to keep the secret of Orion’s parentage from everyone before and after he was born, but as it turned out, it never mattered. Because everyone seemed to know that he wasn’t Gunnar’s.

That was something they were going to have to approach with Orion, someday. 

He didn’t know how that was going to turn out. All he wanted Orion to know – to make sure he spent his entire life knowing – was that titles didn’t matter. Blood didn’t mean a damn thing.

 

VI.

For the last two and a half years, life had been – not easy, no, or even simple – but…content. Scarlett really couldn’t think of a better word for it, even with all the songwriting gifts she had in her arsenal, the ones she came to Nashville with and the ones she’d cultivated with a publishing deal and the rhythms she’d found hiding in the strings of Gunnar’s Gibson. 

Maybe content wasn’t the most sophisticated word to use, or the one she would have picked if she were writing a song about what her life had become. But it was the only one she had. And she was lucky to have even one steady thing to call it, given how shaky things had been before they reached this lull.  
But no. Here they were, all three of them – her, her son, and her man at her side – and they had all survived it. Right now, she felt as if she’d earned a little bit of exaggeration. Especially given all they’d gone through, in the past six years. 

First – and most mundane, as awful as it was to admit – Deacon had fallen off the wagon again. This time not for booze but for the pills he’d been given for that hand injury he got in that accident with Rayna. It had happened quietly this time, no screaming or fighting or throwing things around, breaking furniture and scarin’ the shit outta her. Instead he just packed his things and went to detox, sending her letters every week, asking about her and her son. He didn’t ask about music, about Gunnar, about even Rayna, who by this time was hot and heavy with Liam McGuinnis, and had been for months – or so the magazines reported, and while Scarlett wasn’t one to give those rags the time of day or any moment of her time, she wasn’t totally blind to the way that man looked at her boss, the way they barely let themselves touch each other in public but always seemed to be looking at each other, even when their eyes were elsewhere. She knew that kind of pull, had felt it before many times. And she stayed quiet, grateful Deacon didn’t ask.

Then, after he went to rehab: Maddy Conrad had gotten into a car accident before she even had her permit. Apparently she’d stolen her father’s car, tried to drive it, made it halfway down the block before running a stop light and getting pulled over, then hitting a mail box when she’d tried to come to a stop. She’d been saved from traffic court and getting her driving privileges suspended by what had no doubt been Teddy Conrad’s influence, because the mayor’s daughter crashing a car she wasn’t licensed to drive never made the headlines. The only reason Scarlett knew about it at all was because Rayna had gotten the call when she was having a label meeting with her and Bucky Dawes, and Scarlett had offered to drive an incredibly shaken Rayna to the ER. 

And another domino. Will was outed to the world by Layla Grant, after she caught him and his publicist in a dressing room. Although the sources always said it had been an “anonymous tip” and she never owned up to it, they all knew it had been her. Edgehill had promptly dropped him, the country was in an uproar over the “gay cowboy superstar”, and the internet had all but exploded with some of the most vile, hateful comments Scarlett could never have imagined. 

It had all culminated with Will disappearing for three days leaving no clue to where he’d gone, and ending up in a motel just outside the city with a gun in his mouth. Gunnar had been the one to take that phone call, and Scarlett could barely distinguish a word through the speakers. She’d never heard somebody cry so hard, or been so scared for another person before. They pulled into that empty parking lot on a snowy January night, and she'd ignored Gunnar screaming at her as she raced across the ice and banged on the door to Room 401, yelling Will’s name so loudly she thought her own heart would break. He’d been sitting on the floor when they went in, and she’d gone to wrap her arms around him, rocking him like he was so small, almost as small as her own baby boy. He’d cried, and cried, and cried and cried, and Gunnar had sat down on the floor beside them while she rocked, and crooned, some nonsense that she couldn’t even make out or understand, just kept making it because it kept her from crying, kept him holding onto her, and even seemed to calm the baby kickin’ inside. Gunnar had been grey-faced, gripping Will’s shoulder, and tried very, very hard not to let out tears of his own. 

He’d failed, but then again, so had she. 

They couldn’t remember how long they’d all sat there on that cigarette-stained motel floor, rocking and crying and crooning, listening to the howl of the wind outside. But they finally got Will standing, leaning on the two of them for support, and together they’d walked out of that room, and took him to the home she shared with Deacon. He’d spend the next few weeks sleeping in the master bedroom – Deacon was still finishing rehab – and when her uncle came home, he transferred to the couch without complaint. He was facing a lot of fire from all sides, with his outing still very much in the public eye, but Deacon hadn’t complained about keeping him in their home. From one broken person to the next, he’d offered shelter. 

Will had moved soon after. Moved in with Gunnar, who had buried the hatchet “What If I Was Willing” had created and promised Scarlett he wouldn’t leave him alone. He’d stayed awhile, paying rent with the money he had saved away and from selling his bike, but once the funds ran dry he moved on, not wanting to borrow money to live or stay in the center of the shitstorm much longer. He’d stayed long enough to even come to the baptism, although he’d acted like the walls would fall in if he stepped inside a chapel. 

Then when Orion was a few weeks old, he left. Packed what little clothing and dignity he still carried with him, and moved out – some town right in the middle of Tornado Alley, some type of anonymous, brutal work that opened up. He’d hugged them both, wished her best of luck with the baby. Tried to give his favorite guitar to Gunnar, but Gunnar had refused to take it, and finally agreed to take it on the road. He didn’t know where he was going with this, or what came next, but he left that night on a bus bound for Little Rock, and that had been that. 

He lived in Atlanta now, of all places. Right in the middle of the city, with a condo and that same guitar. And he had Davis, which if Scarlett had to reckon, was the one saving grace that had really helped steady Will’s life out and make him feel like breathin’, feel like his life was still allowed to go on.  
Davis. Sweet, steady Davis. Who loved Will for years; could calm the storm that he was. Who was patient and kind but also firm, and never took Will’s anger or struggle to heart.  
He knew it was always more about Will needing to love Will than Will failing to love Davis, anyway. 

The city had been hard for Country Boy Will, at first. What had been harder was the anger and hate people felt towards his love for Davis. As if it was any of their business.

For a while, the tango their lives had become seemed nonstop; then, just as sudden as it started, it came to a grinding halt. Zoey married Isaiah, and moved to Birmingham for her job. Deacon sold the house, moved into a smaller place – still strung out on Rayna James, but what else could you do about that except shake your head. She and Gunnar had their own home on the outskirts of Franklin – close enough to the city to where they didn’t have too much trouble getting from A to B, but far enough away so Orion could have a yard and neighborhood kids, trying to create that balance between having touring parents and wanting to create something solid for him to come home to. She broke away from Edgehill, Gunnar from Jeannie. Rayna couldn’t offer them a deal, but they ended up signing with an independent label called Little Tree Records, and scored a publishing deal. The biggest break had come when Tim McGraw had cut one of their songs, “Believe Me Now”, as a single to promote a Greatest Hits album he was releasing, and it had charted at number 4. Even got performed at the ACMs that year. Earned them a lot of buzz, royalty checks, and suddenly they were seeing a different side of things. 

They toured a lot, played a lot, wrote more than either of the first two. Still played the Bluebird, but the venues kept getting bigger, and with it their audience more familiar with their music. The Corbin West tour had been big news, completely out of the blue, and they took it, and didn’t try to let themselves think about the specifics. 

Right now, run-of-the-mill was what she lived for. Waking up on a bus a thousand miles away from the day before, whether it be New Orleans or Santa Fe or Canton, or even New York City. Show after show after show, song after song after song. They’d been rollin’ nonstop, trying to make it look like they hadn’t broken a sweat, like they never missed a beat. And in the midst of all of it, they hit milestone after milestone, until they stopped feeling like milestones and started feeling like something that passed for normal – their normal, anyway.

Ever since that string of events that hadn’t seemed to stop rolling – the “Avery Apocalypse”, as Zoey had nicknamed it – the Big and the Bad, all the ceremony and storm, everything seemed content to leave the two of them alone. Which suited Scarlett damn fine. 

The last she’d cared to hear about him had been when Orion was a few weeks old. She’d heard through a few of the musicians from the tour she kept in touch with that Avery had moved out to L.A. when they played their last stop, was now working with some famous producer. Apparently a guy who had worked with Destiny’s Child, back in the day.

The more things change, she’d thought, watching the baby rest in the warmth of Deacon’s arms. The more they stay the same. 

She’d stopped caring, right then, Stopped giving him any more of her time, any more of her thought. Even any more of her spite – he wasn’t worth it, even if was all uncharitable. 

She had a beautiful baby son. It didn’t matter that he had Avery in his eyes, in his blood, in the look of his future. He belonged to her, and her alone. The horse’s ass who happened to allow him to be didn’t matter anymore. 

She’d told him years ago – she wasn’t his woman. 

 

VII.

Gunnar liked this bus. 

It was the biggest they’d ever been able to afford, and so far beyond anything they ever thought possible, when they’d been writing songs in that bright little living room of the first house they shared. They’d looked in places like these before, when they’d first started touring. Imagined what it would be like, when they got this far.

They’d had their eyes on a bus like this for years. When they’d finally been able to afford it, it was more ceremonious than when they’d bought their first home. 

It made him smile a little, thinking about it. The first time an artist cut one of their songs. Their first tour together. Their first time playing the Opry together, their first CMA nomination. Their very first win, that same year. 

And buying this bus. Oh, the things that he counted as major markers in his and Scarlett’s life. 

But it was damn comfortable. He closed his eyes, leaned back against the cushions. It was comfortable, and warm, and he could feel the road thrumming like a livewire, coursing underneath him. Everything about it felt like being home – more than their little house in Franklin did, Gunnar had always felt. 

He turned up the volume on U2’s “Drowning Man”. Off their most overrated album, if you asked him, but this was one hell of a good song, buried underneath lesser hits that had taken on a life of their own in pop culture. He always loved travel days the most – the roll of the wheels underneath him, the hum of the highway, the way his body felt like it was being rocked by the passing of state lines and mile markers. 

Someone was tapping his shoulder. He opened his eyes, and Scarlett took the end of her braid and tickled his face.

“Wake up!” she trilled, smiling.

He groaned. “Come on, I was just about to go to sleep.”

“Well, we have two more songs to write, and we got nothin’ to show for the past week and a half, and that one verse is still givin’ me problems, so…” she gestured for him to move. “Time to get to work, partner.”

“Ugh,” was his reply. But he grabbed his guitar from where he’d strapped it down, and sat beside Scarlett on their usual writing bench. Might as well work while Orion wasn’t crawling all over them, complaining that he was bored and begging Gunnar to watch Horton Hears A Who for the billionth time. 

Orion was sleeping in their bedroom, the door shut tight. A shame he hadn’t been able to do that last night when Gunnar and Scarlett were trying to, but he’d been feverish and miserable all night long, which translated to Gunnar and Scarlett being miserable along with him. But whatever, the boy was asleep now, knocked out with Tylenol and wrapped in Gunnar’s hoodie that hung past his knees, and Gunnar had two extra cups of coffee this morning to get him going. Also plenty of Airborne, because the last thing he felt like dealing with right now was catching whatever Orion had picked up, somewhere between Mobile and Pensacola.

Scarlett was biting the end of her pen – a habit she’d picked up over the years and Gunnar hated, because it grossed him the hell out – and staring intently at the legal pad, gesturing towards the middle of the chorus.

“Do you think we should change this?” she said. “Like, instead of it being ‘when you close your eyes and dream/ I hope you feel my peace’, we change it to, ‘when you close your eyes to rest/remember I wish you the best’?”

“I dunno. Sounds kinda awkward. How many people say ‘close your eyes to rest’?”

“Then how about ‘when you lay your head to rest’ instead?”

Gunnar strummed a few chords, trying to get the strings to tune. “We could try that. But I still like the first way better.”

She rolled her eyes. “Well, let’s put it to actual music and see which one ends up sounding better.”

“Which will still be my way.”

She smacked his arm. “When are you gonna learn I’m always right?”

They’d almost finished the bridge and vowed to tackle that godawful verse they couldn’t seem to get right when Scarlett’s phone buzzed with a new text message.

“It’s Maddie,” she said. “She wants to know if we’ll be back in time for her showcase.”

“Didn’t we just go to that over Christmas?”

“That wasn’t for school, that had to do with a music club. This is some big important thing for graduation.” Scarlett sighed. “We should really be there.”

“When is it?”

“Around the end of the summer.”

Gunnar looked at her, raised an eyebrow.

“I know,” she answered, to his unspoken question. “But we’ll…figure somethin’ out. We need to go. I wanna see her, anyway.”

Gunnar nodded, strummed another chord. They saw Maddie a few times a year – had for a few years now, ever since Rayna had tentatively started allowing Deacon to spend more time with his biological daughter, and Scarlett had wanted to get closer to her newfound cousin. They usually tried to get together around Christmas, even if it was just for a few hours in between her family meals and spending time with her sister, who would be starting college this fall. Samford, if Gunnar remembered correctly – he’d had to sign a congratulations card Scarlett sent out to her not too long ago, as well as a graduation card. 

Maddie now went to Vanderbilt's School of Music, right in the city. Gunnar figured that with her kind of talent, she could have gotten in anywhere, but she’d wanted to stay in Nashville, and Vanderbilt wasn’t exactly for slackers. 

(Plus, if you really wanted to know what he thought, he figured Teddy Conrad’s considerable connections had something to do with that acceptance letter. But he kept that rather ungenerous opinion to himself, and signed the congratulations card Scarlett sent out years ago, when she first got that letter.)

Gunnar remembered both girls well. But for some reason, only as they had been years ago – carrying baby Orion backstage while Scarlett was in soundcheck, putting gel in his dark hair to give him a Mohawk. Maddie used to love tickling his belly, blowing raspberries against his skin, and Daphne had loved it when Scarlett let the baby sit in her lap while the little girl fed him a bottle. Both had sung to him, helped lull him to sleep in his stroller backstage while Scarlett wowed the Rayna James crowd and Gunnar plowed through songs they’d written years ago, sitting in that tiny living room they’d once shared. 

He was about to pick up the notes to the chorus when it suddenly hit him – 

“Damn,” he said, and Scarlett over at him.

“What? Something wrong?”

“Just…” he shook his head. “Just realized Maddie is graduating college soon.” 

Scarlett sighed. “Yeah. Tell me about it.”

He groaned, which turned into a laugh. Scarlett looked over at him and raised her eyebrows, like he’d lost his mind.

“Shit, babe.” He groaned again, sitting back on the couch. “We’re old.” 

“Hey.” She poked him with the edge of her boot. “Speak for yourself.” 

“Doesn’t make it any less true,” he argued, poking her back. “Oh my god, wasn’t she, like, twelve yesterday?”

Scarlett nodded, way too calm for Gunnar’s liking. “Like Orion was just born last week.” She smiled at him. “We are officially grown-ups, old-timer.”

“Guess so.” He ran his hands over his face. “Wonder when the hell that happened.”

Scarlett sighed. “Beats me.”

He watched her fiddle with the edge of her pencap, chewing on it the way he hated. He didn’t quite know when she’d stepped so fully into this person – this calm, careful girl who didn’t take shit from anyone, least of all him. She took to being an artist, a writer, a mother, a wouldn’t-be-his-wife with a grace he can’t exactly say surprises him, but at the same time leaves him wondering. When did she become this person? The girl he fell in love with at the Bluebird, who had him from the first time she ever sang “Ring of Fire” in that sweaty nightclub…she had somehow managed to effortlessly step into this role. 

What wasn’t as easy to define was exactly the hell Gunnar had become, over the years. He had the music he wanted, the woman he loved, a boy he’d raised from the day he’d been born. But he didn’t have Scarlett’s ease. Watching her, it made him feel like he was some stupid kid, trying to look all cool and collected, like he actually had some idea of what the fuck he was supposed to be doing, when really he was clueless and just trying to hope he looked the part.

Standing next to Scarlett made him feel like everyone knew it, too. 

He doesn’t think of himself as a goddamn saint or something – because God knows, there have been days when he’s really struggled to get over all the water under the bridge, to forget the past and be who that little boy he loved needed him to be. The jealousy he couldn’t help feeling sometimes, when he looked at Scarlett with Orion and saw what he’d never have with her, what they would never have together. Even the worst memories he’d never shared with anyone, and would only have told Jason, if he was still alive – like feeling that baby move inside Scarlett, and getting hit with jealousy so wide he thought his heart would burst. 

Days like that, and it makes him wonder how Teddy Conrad survived it, all those years. How he could have looked at little Maddie and not seen Deacon. Seen it in her smile, in her eyes, in the lilt of her voice and the way she looked over her shoulder and smiled at him through her hair. Looked at this child he was supposed to love, and had stopped seeing everything he hated. 

Jesus, that man must have really fuckin’ loved Rayna James like the world depended on it. And must have loved Maddie even more.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because I cannot be concise to save my life, there will be a third part to finish this story off. Thanks to everyone who read & enjoyed Part I!

I.  
They had a perfectly good dishwasher in the new bus – it was one of her favorite perks of actually being able to afford it – but whenever she needed to think on something, or NOT think on something, or just get her mind into a calmer place and needed a break from her life, she always turned to cleaning. And since she was two seconds away from ripping out the bus’s floor and re-tiling it herself, she figured that she might as well tackle the dishes instead – it had always been her go-to chore, anyway.  
She dunked a plate into the little sink, rinsing off the bits of ketchup and egg from Orion’s breakfast. They didn’t have any soap – why would they need it, with a working dishwasher – but she made do with the leftovers from the bathroom pump. Then made a mental note to put it on the shopping list. Along with toilet paper, juice boxes, a new toothbrush for Gunnar, peanut butter, and Poptarts. There was always a need for Poptarts on this bus. If Orion had it his way, he’d live off of those, along those fruit snacks shaped like Angry Birds. Good thing he had a mama who cooked.

And hair ties. Scarlett had run out – she didn’t know if it was the godawful Florida heat or what, but for some reason they either all snapped off right in her hand or got too stretched out to hold the endless mess of frizz that her locks had become. Her hair was utterly resistant to everything – hairspray, flat-irons, even this expensive Brazilian straightening gel she’d tried a few years ago and had cost more than an entire paycheck from her old job at the Bluebird.  
Right now, she was using a plain old rubber band, but apart from keeping the heaviest of it off her neck it didn’t work out well – it broke off strands of hair whenever she tied and untied it, didn’t hold back the wispy bits that were too short for a ponytail, and kept giving her a headache. Scarlett used her forearm – her hands were covered in suds – to wipe the matted, sweaty fringe out of her eyes, and mentally cursed Florida weather. 

She had a million other things she could be doing right now – listening to rough cuts, answering the emails that were piling up in her inbox, working on that new song she and Gunnar had started writing the other day – but now she just wanted to zone out. Orion was watching a movie in their bedroom while Gunnar jogged around the fairgrounds before it got packed with concert-goers – his way of getting ready for their shows – and it was so rare that she ever having a moment to herself like this. Especially when they were on tour and living on top of each other. She just wanted to enjoy it, and do something that relaxed her.  
She rinsed out the coffee cups she and Gunnar had used this morning, the spatula from their morning omelets, the knife sticky with jam and butter. Scarlett flicked the grime and grease away in the murky water, and longed for their kitchen back home, in their Franklin house. 

Lord, she loved that kitchen. The bright yellow paint, the white curtains, the window that looked out at a magnolia tree blooming in the side of their yard, which was always choked with wildflowers. Gunnar sometimes tugged one of the bright purple stems out of the ground and tucked it behind her ears, or cut her free a bloom from a low-slung branch and set it in a mason jar on the shelf right above the sink. She’d waited a long time for a space like that, a warm little hearth; the kind she’d always pictured she’d have growing up, when she had a family of her own.

Scarlett ran the sponge wand down a plate stained with pizza sauce, and found herself thinking back to the first kitchen she’d had, the first place she considered her own. That little house on Clayton Street, the rented house she’d first shared with Avery, then Gunnar. Even thought they’d just been renting it and couldn’t technically call it theirs, it had still felt like the perfect place to start being on her own. 

Even though, she corrected herself, she’d never really been alone there. Except for those few days in between Avery moving out, and Gunnar moving in. If she was being truthful, during the four or five years she’d had that house in her name, Scarlett had never spent more than a few days alone there. 

She tried not to think about that too much. Instead, she tried to remember the house as she’d left it. The family room, with the couch that she and Avery had fought over. She’d wanted it facing one direction, he’d wanted it another. He’d won that fight – she didn’t think it was worth getting into a huge blow-out over a damn couch – but when he’d moved, she’d put it the way she always wanted, and it felt like a victory, somehow. The backyard area, with its fire pit and gravel drive, the tool shed and the crabgrass and the way the cherry blossoms looked in springtime. The front porch, with the swing that Gunnar had put up and where she’d loved to sit on summer mornings, drinking a cup of coffee and watching the city wake up. The upstairs bedroom, where Will used to sleep. The tiny little kitchen area – which was generously called a kitchen, even though it was more like a closet with a stove. 

But Scarlett had loved it, anyway. It had been the first kitchen she’d had all to herself, made her feel like a real grown-up, being able to fix meals in her own space. It was an odd space, though. It didn’t even have a real table, when she and Avery had first moved in. The person they rented the house from had taken the table, but oddly left the chairs behind, so that first night together they’d sat on the couch surrounded by boxes, and eaten their first official meal in their first official home in the living room, instead of the kitchen.

She’d begged Avery to not get anything on the couch. And then she’d ended up spilling her beer on the cushions, anyway. And all over Avery, if she remembered it correctly. She was pretty sure she had, since he wasn’t too happy about that part.

Course, right after he’d gotten all huffy with her, he’d ended up kissing her apologies away. And somehow that had turned into making love on the beer-soaked cushions.

So. 

She sighed. That had usually been the way things went with the two of them. Good at everything that pertained to takin’ their clothes off. Never had any problems in that area.  
Just, yanno, every other. 

They’d had fish tacos that night. From a place down the street that was no longer there – last Scarlett checked, it had been replaced by a sushi restaurant. She remembered that night that she’d wanted to cook something, but moving had tired them out so much they didn’t have the energy to look for pots and pans, and they hadn’t had enough money at the time to go grocery shopping for more than what they strictly needed. That had disappointed Scarlett more than she let on – she’d wanted the first night she and Avery shared  
in the house to be a home cooked meal, one of his favorites. She’d wanted it to be special. Like they were their own little family, just the two of them. 

Getting that house was supposed to mean something like that. The official start of what she was positive would be their life together. Because that was how she knew it would be.

At least, that’s what she had thought, back then.

Scarlet dunked a dirty bowl into the murky water, and ended up splattering suds everywhere. Cursing under her breath, she hurried to wipe the drips off the floor before someone slipped, and the tops of her bare feet. 

Time to not think about stuff like that. 

She concentrated on a song instead, closing her eyes and reaching for a tune. Tried out several to find the perfect one, one that helped her settle back into the rhythm she’d had before. The soothing monotony of a job that had a solid beginning and a solid end. Ended up picking Tom Waits. Gunnar had made her listen to “Hold On” a few years back and she’d completely flipped over it, played it nonstop. It was something she’d sung to Orion, when he was a baby.

“Wasn’t this one of the reasons we bought this bus?”

She whirled around, sponge wand brandished. Gunnar was reaching around her to get into the refrigerator. 

He grabbed himself a water bottle, then tapped the door to the dishwasher. “So you didn’t have to do that anymore?”

Scarlett ran the plate under the sink. “Dishes help me think.”

“Yeah, but when you’re using a broken sponge wand, wouldn’t it be easier to just use the dishwasher?”

Scarlett skimmed a handful of suds towards him. “You’re interruptin’ my zen!”

Gunnar held up his hands in defeat. “Sorry! Sorry! I wasn’t aware I had a zen-thing to interrupt. Wait, hold on a second – ”

Gunnar reached towards her, wiping her forehead with his finger. 

“You had some, uh, suds,” he said, flicking them off his hand. 

“Thanks,” she said. “Good thing nobody else saw me. I’da felt pretty silly walking around backstage with soap all over my face.”

“But you would’a looked cute,” Gunnar said mischievously, and he leaned in for a sweaty kiss.

Scarlett laughed, happy to oblige him.

“I was actually hopin’ to talk to you about something,” she said, when she and Gunnar broke apart.

‘Yeah?” he asked.

Scarlett twisted the dishrag in her hands.

“You know I talked to Zoey the other day,” she said. 

Gunnar nodded. “And?”

“She wants to know if you’d be okay with somethin’. Or really, not be okay with somethin’.”

Gunnar arched an eyebrow. “Huh?”

“Zoey said Isaiah wants to name his best friends as godfathers to the baby,” she said. “And since Zoey already picked her godmothers, she figured it was only fair that they both get to choose who they want.”

Gunnar shrugged. “So, what’s the problem?”

Scarlett focused on drying the dish in her hands. “Zoey didn’t want to upset you. Y’know, by not getting picked.”

Gunnar frowned.

“Not getting picked?” he echoed. “What are we? In second grade?”

“So it doesn’t bother you?”

Gunnar shook his head. “Should it?”

Scarlett paused, hands half-dipped in the suds. 

“It doesn’t,” Gunnar said after a beat, answering his own question.

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll let her know.”

Gunnar nodded, turning away. He busied himself with gulping down a water bottle, and Scarlett fiddled with the dishes. 

Gunnar and Zoey. It was one of those things they never talked about, ever. Neither did she and Zoey. It was just easier to pretend it never happened. Scarlett had never asked Isaiah (and never would), but she was positive Zoey had never told her husband about her relationship with Gunnar.

Plausible deniability. It went a long way in their family, when it came to dealing with the dirt. 

(Didn’t undo the fact that she and Zoey hadn’t spoken for months, though.)

“Why,” Gunnar said after a moment, “would she think that would upset me?”

Scarlett sighed. “She just didn’t wanna upset anyone.”

He leaned against the fold-out table.

“Well, no one’s upset,” he mumbled. “Doesn’t matter.”

Scarlett dipped another plate into the suds, then wiped it dry. She opened her mouth to speak, then closed it, and then against her better judgment, opened it again.

“Maybe not to you it doesn’t,” she said. “But to her, it might.”

Gunnar shrugged one shoulder. Scarlett knew what that meant – he was getting defensive. 

“Well, then,” he muttered. “Sorry I don’t know what she’s thinking.”

“It’s not about that,” Scarlett said. She bit her lip, really not wanting to get into this right now. They’d had this fight before and it never went anywhere. 

“Well then, what’s it about?” Gunnar threw his arms up in the air. “Because if it’s about something that happened a million years ago and is over, then I don’t see what the big deal is. It worked itself out.”

“No, it didn’t really,” Scarlett said, before she could talk herself out of it. Because bad history or not, Zoey was her best friend, had been her entire life, and the two of them had worked SO hard to try and repair the damage her relationship with Gunnar had caused. “We all just pretended it wasn’t there until we got used to it, and you went ahead and acted like it worked itself out.”

Gunnar groaned, shaking his head. She waited for him to argue back, but he just rolled his eyes and leaned against the table, looking away.

“Maybe that’s why you never married me,” he said after a beat, staring at the tiled floor.

Scarlett paused, plate and wet towel still in hand.

“I never married you because you always picked the worst time to ask,” she said, keeping her voice even.

Gunnar shook his head again. A grin crept across his face, and he reached over, taking the dishtowel out of her hands. 

“But you’re still my woman,” he said slyly. 

Scarlett snatched the towel back. “I’m not your woman.”

Gunnar sighed. 

“Fine,” he said. “My…co-writer. My co-star. My co-parent.” He shrugged. “My…partner.”

Scarlett arched an eyebrow. “Partner? Are we goin’ to a square dance, now?”

“I’m just saying,” Gunnar snapped.

Then, he added more softly, “it’s always been official.”

Scarlett tossed the dish towel onto the table. “Then what’s the problem?” she countered.

He looked away from her, stared at the floor. Scuffed his shoes against the tile, drove the toes into the cracks. 

“Okay,” he said, taking a breath. “My problem is I don’t get why won’t say yes!”

Scarlett kept her face blank.

“I asked you so many damn times,” Gunnar argued. “I proved a thousand times over how much I love you. I mean, we raise our damn kid together in the same home – a kid who has MY name – and you STILL won’t just say yes and marry me!” 

He threw his hands up. “Jesus, Scarlett, what more do you want?”

Scarlett kept her back turned to him, shoulders rigid. The silence thudded between them, and the longer it went on the more she could feel it radiating off of Gunnar, the sheer frustration. 

“Could you please,” she said quietly, taking a deep breath, “just drop it. It’s very frustrating. And I don’t need this right now.”

Gunnar scowled. 

“Well, guess what,” he said, turning away from her. “Neither do I.”

He walked away from her, banging the door to the bus on his way out. Scarlett rooted herself in place, staring at the plate in her hand, trying not to wince when the door slammed behind him. 

There was a sliding noise behind her, and Scarlett turned around. The door to the bedroom opened, a small hand pushing it aside. Then she saw Orion’s face, peeking out of the darkness.

II.

They charged him a dollar to walk the pier; he didn’t have his wallet in his jogging shorts, and the humorless guy in the Marlins hat wasn’t letting him go without the fare, so Gunnar cursed under his breath and headed down the beach instead.

He walked down towards where the sand changed colors, slipping his worn sneakers off and dangling them by the laces in his hands. Then he stepped into the warm tides, letting the ocean tug the ground away from under his feet while the heat of the day beat on his tanning shoulders. 

Stupid idea, to try and fight with Scarlett. Especially before a show. If she was wound up, she’d be rattled while they were playing. It was always harder for them to do their sets when they were having problems. They’d learned to deal with it and put on their stage faces over the years, but still – he and Scarlett both knew that they put on a better show when they were working together. 

Gunnar hoped she’d be over it by the time they had to step onstage.

Though he figured, if he was being honest, that it was partly his fault. Especially the part where he brought up the dreaded “M” word. He knew it would push her goddamn buttons, and without fail, it had. 

Well, he thought bitterly – looked like he got what he wanted.

She always acted like that, every time he brought up marriage. Every time he tried to talk about it, or even when someone else brought it up, she acted like it was some big chore. As if wanting to talk about making their life official was like taking out the trash or vacuuming the living room. 

Actually, scratch that. Scarlett would probably have more fun doing either of those things than she would sitting down and really taking him seriously when he wanted to talk about it.

Hell. He had no idea why it was such a big deal to her. Not like they weren’t pretty much married already. They were a packaged deal; had been ever since that first night at the Bluebird with Watty Wyatt in the crowd. Everything they did, they did together – singing, writing, touring, raising Orion. 

Eight years they’d been doing at it, Gunnar thought. He turned to the water, and dug a line in the sand with his big toe. No sooner had he dug it that the tide came and washed it away. Eight years they’d been doing this dance, and Scarlett still turned a deaf ear when it came to the “M” word. 

Ever since that first night she’d turned him down, Gunnar had asked Scarlett exactly three more times to marry him. Two of those times he was being serious, and the third time he was mad and drunk and sort-of not serious but kind of at the same time – he hadn’t meant it, but he did…he didn’t really know.

The second time he’d popped her the question, it was right before Orion was born. Avery was gone – halfway across the country, who really knew, and Gunnar didn’t give a shit – and he’d gone to Scarlett in a wave of hopeless fervor and said that they’d raise the baby together. It was a speech he’d practiced on the drive over, reciting it to his steering column with just as much passion as he had when he said it to Scarlett in person.

He told her that he loved her. That he didn’t care about logistics – if it was Avery’s or his, it made no difference. It didn’t matter who that baby belonged to. Because from then on, it wouldn’t matter. It wouldn’t be anyone’s but there’s.

The third time she’d said no, Orion was two and a half. He’d fallen asleep on Deacon’s shoulder, and the older man carried the boy off to bed. Scarlett had leaned into Gunnar’s arms as they lay slumped on Deacon’s couch, half-asleep and dizzy on home cooking and firelight and old songs. He’d kissed the top of her tangled hair, and whispered it in her  
ear: “marry me”.

Then the fourth time, it was the summer before last, and he was mad. They were drunk and spending the weekend in Atlanta with Davis and Will, taking about how Zoey had just gotten engaged, and when Davis got up to use the bathroom Will confessed to Gunnar and Scarlett that he didn’t want to go to the wedding because he knew Zoey’s dad was a preacher, and he didn’t know how to tell Davis that without starting a fight. Ever since taking up with Davis, Will had been happier than Gunnar had ever seen him, but he also knew there were some parts of Will that even Davis couldn’t understand, couldn’t unlock, couldn’t get to or even see, in some cases. 

Gunnar still wasn’t really sure how the talk had come around from Will and Davis to the two of them, but it had before anyone really knew how it had spiraled into something ugly, and the night had ended with Scarlett sitting out back with Davis in furious silence and Gunnar in a pissed-off stupor in the kitchen, nursing another beer and commiserating with Will.

“In all fairness to Scarlett, man,” Will had said, “tonight was probably not the best moment to bring up the thing between you n’ Zoey. Y’know, after Scarlett dumped you the first time.”

Gunnar had rolled his eyes. “Gee, thanks, Will.” 

Gunner knew that Scarlett trusted him. He knew she loved him. He knew they were meant to be together. So what was her damn problem with the whole thing?

It wasn’t as if it was good for their careers, either. If anything, it hurt them, in some cases. While there were plenty of people who loved the two of them and came out to see them as “Scarlett and Gunnar”, there were plenty of people who weren’t okay with the fact that they were a publicized couple who made their careers together and weren’t married, never mind had a child together. Scarlett by far got more of the heat than Gunnar did from that end, but still. He’d gotten his share of lectures over the years from blue-haireds and soccer moms, from disapproving neighbors and religious nuts – in Meet-And-Greets, fan mail, radio call-in shows, in magazine articles written about them. People poking at their unmarried status, clucking their tongues at Orion being raised by a couple “living in sin”, mentioning the two of them and the disintegration of “family values” in country music…always, someone had something to say about their lives, as if it was their business to judge. 

Not to mention all the people who whispered. 

About Orion, about Scarlett. About where the boy really came from.

Scarlett told him once that she was sure Avery knew Orion was his; he wasn’t stupid, he could count, and if he did the math, their little one-night fit more into the timeline of the day Orion was born than when she and Gunnar had gotten back together almost a full month later. She’d said she always figured he knew the baby was his, and just did what Avery did best – figured a way to make it work for the best, and get himself on top. To hell with the woman he claimed to love for so long, the child he created with her. 

If only everyone who ran their damn mouths off about Orion’s real origins were like Avery – just content to shut up and walk away from it. Gunnar hated that they talked about Scarlett that way. Disrespected her, spread rumors about her, gossiped about her like she was some kind of…loose woman, or something. Like it was their fucking business to be able to form an opinion of her actions. They had no idea who she was, or what she was about. 

Gunnar’s fists tightened at his sides. He remembered the way his fists had come up automatically, the way defending Scarlett had been almost second-nature even then. He wished he could shut up those people who made rude comments about Scarlett as easily as he’d shut Avery up, all those years ago.

Scarlett may have told herself Avery didn’t matter all these years, but that didn’t mean Gunnar didn’t keep one eye open, watching him all this time. He was in California these days, and had a new girlfriend –someone young, blonde, and sweet-faced, someone who looked a lot like Scarlett. Probably who worshipped him just as much as Scarlett had, back in the day. Avery needed that, Gunnar figured. Someone wide-eyed and puppyish to stroke his ego, worship at his feet. Keep him from feeling as small and pathetic as he really was. 

It probably made him feel a little better being with that lookalike - like it could make him feel better about losing the real deal. 

He never deserved her. 

Gunnar clenched his jaw. Avery never deserved her, and he sure as hell never deserved Orion, to be a part of that boy or claim any part of his life.

Without thinking, he burst into a run. Not a jog, either, but a full-out run, almost sprinting down the beach, letting his long legs eat up the endless ribbon of sand and fog and mist. He jogged past people sitting in beach chairs and girls tanning on their stomachs, kids building sand castles, couples walking hand-in-hand in the tides. No one gave him a passing look, and he didn’t look at them. Just focused on some invisible spot on the hazy blue ahead, and kept running.

He loved her. He’d always loved her. And he loved that boy. He was the one who had been there from Day 1 – before that, even. He was committed to Orion, just as much as he was to Scarlett. Why the hell couldn’t she see any of that that? 

What more did he have to do, to prove he was worthy of being her man? 

To hell with it. Gunnar picked up his pace, kicking up a fury of sand in his wake. To hell with it all. 

III. 

They rolled into Sunview Amphitheatre an hour later than they’d planned, the last bus to park in the bus pool backstage. Orion practically leaped out before it officially stopped moving, and ignored Scarlett when she yelled at him not to go backstage and leave the roadies be, to stick close to the bus while she and Gunnar got ready.  
Gunnar headed to the back of the bus instead of joining her in the dressing room. Which was fine by Scarlett. Ever since their fight the other day, they’d kept a distance from each  
other. Or as much was possible to keep on the bus, anyway. 

They had been tense last night during their set at Sunset Sounds, the aftermath of their fight still ringing through both of them. But it hadn’t showed in their music, or on their faces. They’d plowed their way dutifully through the set, being devoted musicians for the sake of firing up the crowd. It was only later that they’d let the masks come off, when they were along. Gunnar had turned the other way in the bed, and she’d bunched the covers up around herself and listened to the sound of him breathing all night beside her, creaking the mattress whenever he moved. He was close enough for her to reach over and touch, but she never did, and he didn’t, either.

Orion hadn’t said anything to her, but Scarlett knew he was upset about what he saw. He hadn’t touched his meals since the fight, ignored her whenever she tried to ask him a question, and had the same dark circles under his eyes that she saw under her own. She knew she needed to talk to him about what he’d seen, but she didn’t know how to do it without confusing him or getting angry about it all over again, or making Orion more upset – none of which was the way she wanted to handle this. 

She glanced at her phone. Sound check should have started by now. Someone would have come and gotten her if she was late for it, or Gunnar would have texted her. Not that delays were unheard of, but this went on too long. Scarlett walked backstage, went to stage hand after stage hand, until she found one that gave her an answer.  
“Someone unhooked a bunch of wires from the sound system,” he said. “It’s taking us a while to get everything back online.”

“Who did it?”

He shrugged. “No idea.”

He went back to working, and Scarlett sighed, walking the perimeter of backstage. Great. Now they were falling behind. She always hated that, when things didn’t run on time. Biggest pet peeve of hers in this business. Which was kinda ironic, given that this was an industry that ran on waiting, waiting, waiting. 

Scarlett passed by the dressing rooms, almost to the one she and Gunnar shared, when she stopped in her tracks. Orion was sitting on one of the loading ramps, small legs dangling off the edge, wringing his hands in his lap. He looked up and caught his mother’s eye, and the expression on his face went from nervous to entirely too innocent in so short a time that Scarlett knew who was behind the show delay.

She went over to the loading ramp, took the spot beside her son. 

“You know there’s a problem with a bunch of wires back there?” she asked, her voice casual.

Orion wouldn’t look at her. 

Scarlett sighed. “Didn’t I tell you about not walkin’ around back there?”

His head snapped up. “I wasn’t!” 

“So the cables just unhooked themselves, is that it?”

“Maybe!” Orion scowled. “I didn’t do anything, I was in the bus! I wasn’t running backstage cause you told me not to!”

When Orion was telling the truth, he’d stare at the ground, shuffle his feet. Mumble a word or two, and then scowl out of the side of his mouth, angry and embarrassed he’d been caught. When he was lying, though, he’d keep talking until she cut him off with a punishment. 

Just like his daddy. 

“You better stop lyin’,” she said, narrowing her eyes. She adopted what Deacon called her “Brimstone and Fire” voice, the one that she used when she wanted to put the fear of  
God into her son. “Okay? You’ll get in worse trouble. Unless you wanna sit on the bus for the entire show.”

His eyes widened. “No! No, I don’t wanna sit on the bus, Mama! I wanna watch the show!”

“Then did you walk on the cables and mess ‘em up?”

He stared at the ground. “Yeh,” he mumbled.

“’Scuse me?”

Orion kicked the ramp with his sneaker. 

“Yes, ma’am,” he mumbled sullenly, after a moment.

“Even though I told you not to walk around back there or leave the bus area?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Softer this time.

She sighed. “Stay where I can see you. If I catch you runnin’ around back there again, you’re goin’ on that bus and that’s it. Okay?”

His hands twitched at his sides. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Orion.”

He scowled at her. “What.”

She paused a moment before saying, “you know, Gunnar n’ me, we were just havin’ a grown-up fight, okay? About stupid grown-up stuff. Y’know it’s not about you, right?”  
Orion shrugged one shoulder. 

“Mmmhmm,” he mumbled. 

Scarlett reached over and put her hands on his boney knees.

“I’m sorry you heard that,” she whispered. “But we aren’t mad at you, I promise. Okay, bud?”

She reached up to ruffle his hair. Orion darted away at first, but then ducked back under her hold, resting his head on her shoulder.

“Okay,” he said quietly. He closed his eyes and put his head against her collarbone, and Scarlett pressed a kiss into his tangled, sweaty hair.

“Can I go play in the seats?” he asked. 

Scarlett sighed. “Okay. But don’t bug any of the crew. They gotta work, all right?”

Orion nodded, then took off without another word. One of his favorite things to do before a show was to run around the empty amphitheater, jumping over the rows of plastic seats and swinging himself between the aisle ways. It wasn’t Scarlett’s favorite thing to let him do, but he needed to blow off steam, and it helped keep him busy while she and Gunnar got ready. 

If Gunnar even spoke to her before their set, that was.

She tried not to think about it. Had to focus on getting herself ready for the show tonight. She watched Orion as he sprinted through the empty rows of chairs – all of which would be filled tonight, since Corbin had a sold-out show – wondered how much bigger the amphitheater would look when it was filled. For some reason, it always looked like it was a lot bigger when it was crammed with people, rather than when it was empty. Scarlett had never understood that logic; she always figured it would be the other way around.

Looking back at her son one more time, she slipped her earbuds in and grabbed her hair straightener. If Gunnar was gonna sulk, then fine. Long as he was there to sing with her come 7:45, when the lights went up.

She flipped through her songs, let an old Kitty Wells staple try and drown out her thoughts. It didn’t work, but she could pretend like it did.

V.

Gunnar knew Scarlett was still pissed when she didn’t say a word to him backstage as they waited for the other opening act – a family band of two brothers and a cousin, along  
with the cousin’s wife, who called themselves the Ramblers – to finish up their set. Gunnar tried to brush it off, and figured two could play at that game. He stood beside Orion, who was waiting by the monitor, and ignored Scarlett. Trying not to think about what all that loud noise would do to the boy’s ears when he got older, Gunnar put his hands on  
Orion’s slim shoulders, and squeezed them tightly.

Orion tilted his face back to Gunnar, eyebrows raised. Gunnar looked back, then made a face, crossing his eyes and sticking out his tongue.

Orion smirked. “You look silly,” he informed him. 

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Scarlett’s face twitch into a half-smile.

“He always looks silly,” she murmured.

When Gunnar looked over at her, her mouth slid into a quick grin. He almost grinned back, but instead bent down and kissed Orion’s forehead – a move that surprised the boy, since Gunnar wasn’t usually so affectionate with him. Then he bent down, circling his arms around Orion’s slim waist.

“Get away from the speakers” he said. “You’ll hurt your ears.”

Orion scowled. “I like standing here.”

There it was again – that familiar Avery twinge in his face. Gunnar tried not to flinch. It was still a reflex, after all these years. 

“Gunnar’s right, bud,” Scarlett said. “Move back, a little.”

Orion opened his mouth to protest, but then the Ramblers were finishing, and the house lights went up for a moment. Gunnar grabbed the boy’s shoulder again as the crew hustled to move the equipment, and the members of the band each gave them quick hugs or pats on the back while they rushed off to their bus for the night. Orion was fidgeting, bored without anything to watch, and Gunnar and Scarlett didn’t look at each other for the twenty minute it took the roadies to reconfigure the stage to fit their band.

When it was time for their set, Scarlett kissed Orion on the cheek and ruffled his hair. Gunnar squeezed his shoulders again, and followed Scarlett onto the stage. He put the smile on his face that he needed, and saw Scarlett was doing the same. She asked the crowd how they were, and when the sea of sweaty, drunk, overbright faces roared back at them,  
Scarlett grinned, and the band behind them burst into their opening number, “Fightin’”. 

As he made his way through the intro chords, Gunnar peered back behind the curtain. Orion was in his usual space, peeking out at the two of them, his tiny shape just barely visible in the darkness. When he met Gunnar’s eyes, Gunnar grinned at him, and Orion surprised him by smiling back. Then the little boy’s arms mimed playing a guitar, and suddenly, Gunnar’s smile didn’t need to fake itself anymore.

VI.

Gunnar told her that he was going to pick up a pizza for dinner. He was careful when he asked her if she wanted her usual – olives and green peppers – or if she’d prefer something else. 

“No, thanks,” she said. “Rye? You want anything on your pizza?”

“Pepperoni,” Gunnar and Orion said at the same time.

“And I want dipping sticks,” Orion added.

Gunnar and Scarlett both narrowed their eyes at the boy. 

“I know there’s gonna be a ‘please’ on the end of that sentence,” Scarlett said.

Orion scowled.

“Please,” he parroted. 

Gunnar nodded. “And extra garlic sauce.”

“Ewww, no.” She laughed, but was only half-joking. She was the one who had to sleep next to Gunnar. “Please, no garlic. I will PAY you not to get garlic.”

Gunnar smiled. A small one, but he did. And so Scarlett felt like it was okay to lean forward, anticipating, and she wasn’t wrong. His lips pressed against hers – quick, barely a peck, but a kiss all the same. 

“No garlic,” he conceded. “But I’m gettin’ those spicy wings instead.”

Scarlett rolled her eyes. “I’m not seeing another way out of this, am I.”

Gunnar shook his head. “’Fraid not.”

She smiled. He did, too. And before she had time to consider it, his mouth was already there. 

“Be back soon,” he said, when they broke apart.

Scarlett nodded as he left. They hadn’t really made up after their fight, but spent the past few days dancing around each other like birds – oddly courteous of each other’s movements, giving the other a wide berth in the kitchen and in the dressing rooms, only melting the ice temporarily when they went onstage to perform. Gunnar had been polite, she’d kept her mouth shut, and Orion had whined about being bored. It was more or less the way things always were between them, except she and Gunnar had been acting like two strangers who happened to be sleeping in the same bed, living on the same bus, singing the same love songs and raising the same child together. 

Orion broke her out of her reverie.

“How much longer do we have to be on the bus?” he asked. He was sitting on the couch, bouncing on his knees. The iPad was in his small, sweaty hands, fingerprints smeared on the cover, and a kid’s TV show was playing that he wasn’t watching.

Scarlett reached around him to grab the box of trash bags. Almost empty; she’d need to remember to buy some, the next time they made a grocery run.

“Not too long,” she said, and then suddenly realized she was right. Orion would be starting school in a few weeks. When that happened, she and Gunnar would leave the tour, and  
another band, the Blackjackers, would take over their spot and open for the last two months of Corbin’s show. 

She’d go from state lines and amphitheaters to bus stops and carpool before she knew it. She and Gunnar would be back in their little yellow house, back to alarm clocks and school bus stops, pushed into their old routines of writing in between helping Orion with his homework and fixing his lunches; vacuuming the living room and raking the leaves in the yard; cleaning the gutters and taking out the recycling every Monday night. And singing at the Bluebird every third Thursday of every month – along with Deacon, and now, more often than not, Maddie. 

Which reminded Scarlett.

“Hey, guess what, bud,” she said to Orion. “We’re gonna see Maddie before you start school.”

That got his attention. Orion adored Maddie. 

“Really?” he said.

She nodded. “We’re gonna hear her sing at her school. Remember, when we did that for Christmas, and got all dressed up?”

“Is she gonna play with Deacon again?”

Scarlett shook her head. “No. That’s just for when she comes to see us. This is for school. So she’s gonna sing all her own songs. Like me and Gunnar do.”

“But can she sing with us later?” Orion asked.

She shrugged. “I don’t know.”

Orion flopped back down on the couch.

“I wanna sing with her,” he mumbled. “She always lets me pick the song.”

“You can sing with her when she comes for Christmas,” Scarlett reminded him. “She always sings with you then.”

Orion bounced on the couch again, springing up on his knees. 

“Is Aunt Zoey coming for Christmas?” he asked. “She makes the best food.”

Scarlett arched her eyebrows at her son. “Better than your mama?” she teased.

Orion blushed and looked away. “I like her food,” he mumbled.

Scarlett had to laugh at that. 

“No, bud. You know she can’t.”

Orion frowned. “Why not?”

“Cause Aunt Zoey’ll have her baby by then.” She ruffled Orion’s hair. “I told you that. You’re gonna have a new cousin, and your mama’s gonna be an auntie.”

There was a long silence. Orion went back to poking at the iPad, the kid’s show singing a determinedly cheerful tune. Scarlett went back to flipping through her lyric book, back to that one damn verse that had been giving her so much trouble the past few days. She knew she ought to take Gunnar’s advice and just let it rest for a few days, or maybe a week, then come back to it with fresher eyes, but she wasn’t exactly laden with free time, these days.

Orion was frowning at her, his mouth puckered like he had a question to ask, and couldn’t quite figure out how to form. 

“How d’ya get babies?” he said finally.

She stared. “’Scuse me?”

He didn’t reply to that one. Just turned the corners of his mouth down, looked at the floor and tilted his wide blue eyes up to her. Damn it, he looked so contrite. 

But she knew that look too well from Avery. And unfortunately for her son, it didn’t work on Orion as it had on his father, once upon a lifetime ago.

“Uhh…well…”

Not exactly the most appropriate conversation to have with a six-year-old. 

She tried to be as clear but non-graphic – but also not fluffy or dumbed-down – as possible. Also avoiding any of the bullshit religious guilt she’d been fed about bodies, about submission, about sin. She may have grown up in Mississippi and been best friends with a preacher’s daughter, but that didn’t mean she was totally blind to the all the attention she’d gotten from boys. And once she turned sixteen and lost her virginity to Tanner Deason, she’d started learning more about her body than any eighth grade health class video could have taught her. 

“It’s only for when you’re grown up, and when you really decide that you love somebody,” she began. “And there’s all types of ways to show it, too. Like, some girls love girls the way Gunnar and me love each other, and then you already know that some boys like boys that way, too.”

Orion nodded. “Like Davis and Uncle Will.”

“Exactly,” Scarlett said. “And there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s all the same. It’s just for when you’re older, though.”

“How much older?”

Scarlett smiled. “Old,” she told him.

Orion’s eyes crinkled, his mouth tilted down. 

“Davis and Uncle Will can’t get babies,” he said slowly. “Not like Aunt Zoey and Uncle Isaiah. From their lovin’ each other.”

Scarlett shook her head. “No. That’s the difference between people who like the opposite of what they are, or the same. If boys like boys, they can’t make babies, or girls with  
girls. Only a boy and a girl. But not everyone wants babies, and anyway, it’s still okay, because it’s love.”

Orion nodded. He already knew boys and girls were different. 

“And Uncle Deacon is Maddie’s dad,” Orion said, and Scarlett tried not to look too surprised that her son had picked up on that information. “But she doesn’t call him Daddy, she calls him Deacon and she has a different daddy.”

“Yeah.” Scarlett didn’t know how else to explain this particular bit to a six-year-old. “Sometimes, babies get…made, and the people that make ‘em, they ain’t always the ones that get called Mama and Daddy. Sometimes, kids don’t have anyone to call a mom or dad, because they don’t have one. Like Memaw is my Mama, but my daddy wasn’t there”

“Where’s your daddy?”

Scarlett hesitated. She would really like to know the answer to that particular question herself, but had given up on that sometime around the time she turned nineteen. She knew a lost cause when she saw one.

“I don’t know,” she said after a beat. “But the good news was, it didn’t matter that he wasn’t there. Because I had Uncle Deacon. He was like my dad, even though he didn’t…make me.” 

Orion was nodding enthusiastically, though. 

“Like me n’ Gunnar,” he said. 

Scarlett’s head snapped up. “What?”

“Like him and me,” he said. “Cause he didn’t make me. Like a daddy.”

Oh, shit. 

“Who told you that?” Scarlett asked. If Gunnar or Deacon had breathed a word…

But Orion didn’t seem too concerned. 

“Memaw says I don’t look like Gunnar,” he said. “And I never call him Dad, cause I know he isn’t. I know my daddy is somewhere else.” He looked up at her, eyes wide. “And I heard Aunt Zoey tellin’ Uncle Will that two dads can raise a kid just fine, cause it’s better n’ havin’ no dad like me.”

Scarlett stared at the earnestness on her son’s small face, the honesty in his words. She knew people had been talking – they had since word got out about her pregnancy – but she always wondered how much her son understood about the way people looked at him, the whispers, the double meanings. Part of her figured he was still too young and it sailed over his head. But her son had also lived a short, blunt life on the road with her and Gunnar, more comfortable sleeping on a bus or a plane than in a bed surrounded by walls, and with that came a different way of understanding life than most kids his age. It may not have been the best way to bring up a child, but it was all he’d ever known. 

She knelt down to be eye-level with her son, staring into his wide eyes. So blue, so round, so very much Avery’s. 

“Baby,” she whispered. “You know…Gunnar and Deacon, and Davis and Uncle Will, and Uncle Isaiah…they all love you so much. You know that, right?”

Orion nodded, his brows knitted together. “Yeah.”

Her hand gripped his slender shoulder. “And ‘member what I said about love bein’ love, and it doesn’t matter what kind?” Another dark-headed nod. “Okay. Well, that means that  
Gunnar and Deacon love you like a daddy. They love you so, so much.”

“Like you?” asked Orion. 

Scarlett felt a grin hugging at her lips.

“Almost as much as me,” she said. “Cause I’m your mama. I love you more n’ anyone.”

VI.

She put Orion to bed as soon as Corbin was done with his set. Later than she probably should let a six-year-old stay up, but he’d begged, and Scarlett didn’t have too much time to argue – she had to go onstage to sing with Corbin for his big duet, “Miss You Mississippi”, during his acoustic bit, and then she and Gunnar always went out during the encore to join Corbin in singing “She’s The Everything” and “Make My Day”, his two biggest hits. So she let the boy sit by the edge of the stage until he looked ready to fall asleep, and Gunnar carried him to bed when it was all over. 

He crawled beside her sometime after one AM, skin still buzzing from the electricity of a sold-out show and one hell of a rowdy crowd. They still weren’t talking much, but things between them had melted just a little, and after the show tonight he’d actually kissed her onstage when their set was done, right before they took their bows with the band. Scarlett had been surprised, but she also knew Gunnar well enough to know when he was faking a kiss for the sake of the crowd, and when he actually meant it.

“Good of you to make it,” she murmured. 

Gunnar sighed beside her, and the mattress rippled with the motion. After a beat, he slipped his arm around her waist, and when he pulled himself so close that she could feel his heart beating into her back, Gunnar pressed his lips to her bare, freckled shoulder. 

“Had to do laundry,” he said. He put his face into the back of his neck, lacing their fingers together. She inched more tightly into the groove his body made against hers, wanting his warmth; a few days without him wanting to touch her made her realize how much she missed it. “I was getting dressed to watch backstage and realized I didn’t have anything to wear except that t-shirt from Fall Festival last year.”

Scarlett cracked one eye open. “The Fall Festival at Orion's school?”

Gunnar groaned. “Don’t remind me.”

Scarlett smiled, turning over into his arms. She put her head on his shoulder. She’d always loved how well it fit there, against the angle of his collarbone and the shelf of his jaw; like he was built just for her head to rest in just that spot.

Then she remembered the conversation she’d had earlier that day.

“Did Orion say anything to you today?” she asked quietly. 

He peered down at her through the crook of his arm. 

“He said he knew spinach helped your colon,” he said, and Scarlett laughed. “And that I should eat more of it.”

Scarlett grinned. “You do need to eat more green,” she joked. “The kind with leaves, you know…not the kind that gets mixed with chocolate-chip ice cream.”

Gunnar swatted her arm lightly. “Hey, mint chocolate chip single-handedly earns us our existence on this planet.”

“Whatever you say.”

Her eyes drifted shut against him, and he tightened his grip on her shoulder. 

‘Why?” he asked, after a moment. His hand was gently stroking her tangled, freshly-washed hair, and he let it weave in between his fingers. “Did something happen?”

Scarlett put her hand on his chest, ran her fingers gently over his heart. She took a deep breath. 

“He was askin’ about his daddy today,” she whispered. 

Gunnar’s hand stilled in her hair. The forbidden topic. He sat up and looked at her, face drawn. 

“I’m that boy’s daddy,” he said sharply. 

“I know,” she said, and sighed. “Gunnar, we knew this day would come. And there’s gonna be more questions every day. Especially when he gets older!”

“Yeah,” Gunnar argued. “Exactly. When he’s older, Scarlett! He’s still six years old, and he’ll learn more about all this when he’s ready!”

“I don’t think it works that way,” she said. “He’s gotta work it out on his own, that’s not something we get to decide for him!”

“You really think this is something he can work out on his own?” Gunnar shot back. He shook his head. “I mean, how the hell did he even find out?”

Scarlett frowned. “What, like all the people who just talk about it aren’t enough?”

Gunnar looked at her, then fell back onto the pillows with a groan. 

“Boy’s smart,” he mumbled, covering his face with his hands. “Too smart, sometimes.”

Scarlett sat up, drawing the covers around her. She stared at the indents of her knees underneath the sheets.

“You need to talk to him,” she said. 

When Gunnar didn’t respond, she looked over at him. “Gunnar,” she said. 

He sighed. Ran his hands through his hair. 

“Yeah,” he muttered. “I know.”

“Do you know how you’re gonna say?”

He threw his hands up. “Not particularly, seeing as how I thought I’d have another ten years to figure it out!”

He leaned against the board, groaning. Scarlett tucked herself back to the shelf of his collarbone, pressing a kiss into his jaw, and put a hand on his chest. 

“Just remember,” she said. “You’re still that boy’s daddy. You’re the only one he’s ever known. He loves you. And I know you love him.” 

She closed her eyes, tucked into his neck. “I know you would do anything for him. You’ll find out what to say.”


End file.
